explorations of mindful fatherhood

Tag Archives: personal development

My wife and I started watching The League, a long-running show about fantasy football friends who basically love/hate (mostly hate) one another and are driven by their all-consuming goal of screwing each other out of the yearly league trophy. While the show’s a bit intense on the burns, cuts, digs, and jabs the friends throw at one another, there’s something refreshing about it. Although the guys’ exchanges verge on cruel (with the exception of digs on Andre, which are always cruel), their friendships are long-standing and committed.

I used to have friends like that. Okay, not quite that mean and not that obsessed with football (we were way too nerdy to be sports fans), but friends who were comfortable enough to dig on each other. I was only recently reminded of how much this aspect of friendship has been absent from my life when an old college friend wrote to a group of us about attempting a reunion. In the process of inviting me, he informed me that he’d been keeping an eye on the bestiality laws in California, and would let me know when it was legal for me to return to the state. He also told another friend that 1997 wanted its hotmail address back. What a d-bag, but a completely lovable one.

Since leaving college, I’ve moved around so much that I’m left with very few friends. As I get older, I’ve realized how hard it is to find new friends at my age (see my previous post). To make matters worse, I find myself living in a fairly boring suburban monoculture, which doesn’t provide the wealth of friendship possibilities I’d like. Let’s just say that open house night at the public elementary school is overly crowded with wealthy, grey-haired 50-something fathers and their very young wives. Not exactly my typical friendship pool.

I once made friends with one of these older gentleman, a local professor who had about 15 years on his wife (she was more my contemporary than he was). After getting to know him for a while, I had this back-log of old man jokes in my head; a wealth of walker-walking, Viagra-chomping, prostate-enlarging jokes that had nowhere to go. These didn’t pop into my head because I hated the guy, but because I wanted to test the relationship and see if it could evolve. It’s not because I’m a sick bastard, but because many of my best relationships have been marked with a level of comfort and humor in which guys could rag on each other, and which was the hallmark of a strong, mutual friendship. But there was something about this guy that told me he couldn’t handle it. Ultimately, the relationship died out. Our backgrounds, daily lives, and approaches were just too different.

Some might read this post and interpret these kinds of friendships as immature men holding misdirected hostility that seeps out in the form of competition and verbal aggression. In the context of comparing my experience with The League, I can understand this interpretation. In the show, there is very little love expressed between these fictional friends, and the threats they perceive in one another override any care they hold for one another. But that’s not what I’ve experienced in these friendships. These friendships, for me, have been some of the most caring I’ve experienced. In the case of my recent email exchange, after a few more quippy emails shared between the group, I reflected on my experience. I wrote a personal message to the friend who had suggested the reunion and expressed to him how much I missed having such a close friend in my life. He responded thoughtfully and kindly, and we exchanged flattery and well-wishes, planning on re-connecting soon. In spite of not seeing each other for 7 years, there’s a strong bond between us.

As a 40-year-old man, I think it’s incredibly hard forming new friendships, let alone those that can evolve to embody the comfort and care I’m talking about. Many friendships at this age are relegated to specific contexts (i.e., work-friends, soccer-sideline-acquaintances), but these contexts dictate specific sets of scripted interactions and limits. Plus, many men my age are (rightfully) consumed by their family and work lives, which don’t allow time to invest in friendships and cultivate strong bonds. I’m left with a sadness that some of my friendships may never be able to evolve to the point where we can insult each other’s size, intellect, and fashion-sense, and yet say goodbye being certain we have each other’s back.

I have to admit that I’m a reformed blog-hater. Three years ago, if you had asked me what I thought of folks blogging about their own lives, I would have told you I considered it the most narcissistic writing endeavor that our technological age had birthed. I simply–and mistakenly–thought that bloggers were the most self-absorbed of all writers.

Many apologies to my fellow bloggers for these sentiments, and I assure you I’ve come to value blogging. Let me explain how I turned that corner.

Admittedly, my initial motivations for starting a blog were opportunistic. I completed the first draft of a book manuscript about two years ago, and then launched into a year of constant editing. When I tried submitting to agents, I came up dry. I stopped writing. I didn’t know how I felt about it all. I had read many things about blogging as a means for developing a platform, but was uncomfortable with the idea. I was still holding onto my dislike for bloggers. Even my wife asked me about possibly starting a blog, but I refused (she’s full of good ideas that are sometimes hard for me to accept).

But I kept hearing about blogging and its benefits for writers. After one final push from a relative, I decided to bite the bullet. I thought it would be a good way of getting back into writing. I settled on the theme of mindful fatherhood, a topic with which I’d been struggling.

Then I started to write. I enjoyed sitting down to put my thoughts into words and elaborate on the struggles I face each day, especially my challenges of feeling depleted or absent at home. But here’s the thing: expressing my thoughts and feelings has never been easy for me. When something bad happens, I usually try to make sense of the situation quickly, draw some conclusions, and then sweep it under the rug so I don’t have to deal with it any longer. This is the case for a host of life’s struggles, but especially my losses and fears. It’s a source of conflict for my relationships because I don’t process significant events or spark conversations about my feelings. Instead, I’m happy to run away. I’d rather compartmentalize my feelings, stow them away where I don’t have to look at them, and try to forget.

Yet I find that when I write, I have much more tolerance when it comes to conflicting emotions. An issue will come to mind and I’ll start putting it down in words. With time, my thoughts and feelings begin crystallizing and connecting in my consciousness. I’m sure this is what any devoted journal- or diary-keeper would tell you. And yet, my previous attempts at journaling always fell flat. Each time I’d start a journal, I felt like a fool, and put it down again.

But not with blogging. I stuck with blogging. But why? After many posts about my daily struggles, I realized I wasn’t shying away. I kept blogging and, in the process, tolerating my feelings long enough to allow them to evolve on the screen. My thoughts felt more organized, and through that organization I was better able to sit with them.

And yet, when it came down to it, I still couldn’t voice my feelings one-to-one with others in my life. On one occasion, my wife read a post of mine and pointed out that she’d never known how I’d felt about that post’s topic. She hadn’t realized that I’d given the subject any thought. It was really difficult for us both to understand at the time. Why did I feel more comfortable posting my feelings rather than sitting down with my own wife to have a conversation about them? Was a “like” from a fellow blogger more important to me than connecting with her?

I was racked with guilt. I was the one who used to slam bloggers for being self-absorbed, and here I was, potentially being the biggest narcissistic idiot of them all. Was on-line validation of my feelings more important than validation from my wife? Was I so shallow that it took a disembodied audience to force me to look at my own feelings about things, when the support of one person wasn’t enough?

I beat myself up like that for quite a while, but it forced me to sit and look at my real motivations. This is what I’ve come up with so far. I am a guy who relies on deadlines and pressure to accomplish things. I like to see a project completed and presented in a nice neat package. There’s something about blogging that satisfies this need in me. I set a schedule for how many posts I’ll get out per week, determine a few topics, write in my free time, tweak and revise, and send out a fully formed post in the end. Although my readership is small, there’s something about the knowledge that I have “readers” that helps me stick to it. I have no delusions that people are waiting on tenterhooks for my posts, but the very fact that I “manage” a blog makes me commit to a schedule in my head. That’s what makes me actually stick to the writing routine.

When it comes to developing the thoughts themselves, it’s the writing process that helps me do that. At times, I have set aside time just to think (without writing) about tender subjects, like the losses in my life, my relationship with my parents, or conflicts at home, but my mind inevitably wanders off. I’ll turn off the radio in the car to think and gain some clarity, but I end up thinking about dinner or the driver in front of me, and before I know it the radio is back on and I’m pulling into the garage. My mind won’t allow me to sustain a thought that’s too uncomfortable.

But with writing, the words on the screen tether me to the thought. They make it hard to get distracted or leave loose ends hanging. The words on the screen force me to complete my thoughts and link one sentence to the next. It’s through blogging that I have been able to tolerate reflection.

So, who is it all for? I’ve discovered it isn’t for the faceless on-line audience. It isn’t for people in my life. It isn’t even for my wife. It’s for me. I want to become better at sitting with things that are difficult. I want to be able to make sense of my life, what I want from it, and the things I do to thwart my own development. Only by investing in this process I can become a better person, a better father, a better husband. Blogging has helped me open up to myself a bit more, and has given my thoughts some space to expand.

My new challenge is translating that voice. I have been somewhat successful in putting these words on a screen, and now I have to move them into spoken word. I have to be able to voice my thoughts and struggles with my wife and others in person, in order to grow my relationships and help others understand me.

I’m glad that blogging has helped spark this process in me, but I have to remember my priorities. Although I love seeing a new “like” on the screen or a new person following my work, I have to remember that blogging is about giving my thoughts the chance to expand, and extending that process into my personal relationships. That is where the heart of the growth lies. I am forever indebted to readers with whom my words resonate, because they emphasize that this process of growth and learning is a valid one, and one that deserves further investment.

I would chance a guess that this process motivates the writing of many other bloggers. Blogging is a chance to expand upon one’s thoughts in order to develop further as a person. It gives the writer an opportunity to reflect on one’s self and perhaps carry those insights into other, more personal relationships. For this reason I have a new appreciation and, dare I say, love for blogging.

I’d like to know others’ motivations for blogging. Please post or add a comment. Why do you blog?